User talk:Noahspurrier
Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome, welkom Welcome to the Vim Tips wiki! We hope you can help improve the articles by fixing typos, adding comments (at the bottom of each tip page), rewriting tips, joining in discussions, or making any other improvements. Be sure to visit the [[Project:Community Portal|'community portal']] for information about our site, with links to how to pages. Keep an eye on the page, where all edits and their authors (anonymous or signed-in) are listed. Bookmark it, maybe. If you want to get involved, check out our Vim Tips Wiki:Policy. We'd like you to join the [http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/vim-l mailing list]. Enjoy! Welcome Hi Noah. I can see from your new tip and your web site that you are extremely accomplished in matters relating to Vim and wikis, and it would be really great if you could help as we slowly polish our tip collection. However, your tip presents me with a dilemma because I am well known here for opposing new tips that rely on external sites. I have expressed my thoughts in the tips linking to external sites section on the May new tips page. There are lots of people with Vim information on their own web site, and I don't want to set a precedent that would encourage them to make a tip here that is little more than a link to that site (we've already deleted a couple of new tips of that nature). I hope we'll find a way to allay my concerns while retaining your tip. We don't need to do anything quickly since it will take a few weeks to discuss the May new tips. I'm just welcoming you in somewhat of a back-handed fashion! It would be great to get more opinions on the vim-l mailing list, so please consider joining (it's very low volume). --JohnBeckett 08:27, 27 May 2008 (UTC) ---- This is an understandable position. I agree, that in general it is better if a tip is self-contained, but to follow that as a hard and fast rule all the way then the Vim wiki must also host downloads or reject any tips that require installing external tools. I think that the case for Twit is a different than someone creating an article that does little more than say "Check out the cool info I found on this site here." That clearly doesn't add much. On the other hand, I'm not sure how you would make a formal rule to distinguish the two. It seems like you have to judge on a case-by-case basis and decide which ones are appropriate and add to the Vim Wiki and which ones are noise. The Twitter tip is not very elaborate to be sure But I think it is philosophically valid for the Vim Wiki. Some tips are valid yet do little more than make you aware of external tools and how they can be used in Vim. And if you are going to describe an external tool then surely you want to provide a link where the tool can be found and downloaded? In the case of the Twitter tip, the external link does little more than bring you to a download page. Otherwise, I'm not sure how you would handle this case within the Vim Wiki. --Noahspurrier 21:21, 27 May 2008 (UTC) ---- I think we have good agreement. Just to clarify, I'm hoping we can work out some extra content for your tip (perhaps just a couple of paras) so I can feel it is consistent to keep your tip while brutally deleting others. For example, there would be many Vim users who had no idea that you could press a few keys in Vim to influence external apps – so the tip might start with a para introducing that fact. Also, I had no idea what Twitter was. A tip here should not take much time to introduce Twitter, but I think some explanation is required because IMHO each tip should start by briefly explaining what it actually does, and why you might want it. Let's not say any more at the moment. I'd like to consolidate discussion on the May new tips page, but I don't want to do that until June. I have a script that creates the monthly new tips page, and if we get a couple more tips this month, I will have to manually weave our comments into the new page, so I'd prefer to wait until next week. --JohnBeckett 01:18, 28 May 2008 (UTC) Please check tip summary Hi Noah, I have put a summary of your proposed tip (see May 2008 new tips) on Vim scripts. The Main Page has a link to Vim scripts. Please check what I have written. If there are any problems, edit the page, or let me know. Also, we need to decide what to do with the May new tips. If you have any opinions, please add them. If you think the tip you added should be kept (in addition to its summary), please expand the tip with some more generic information, along the lines previously discussed. Thanks! --JohnBeckett 06:01, 8 July 2008 (UTC)